BOB GARFIELD

Bob Garfield is editor at large for MediaPost. A 30-plus-year commentator on media and marketing, he is co-host of public radio's Peabody Award-winning “On the Media” program; senior fellow at Wharton Future of Advertising Program, SEI Center for Advanced Studies in Management; founder of the Media Future Summit and author of five books.

As the media economy was increasingly blown to bits by the digital revolution, with the very existence of journalism hanging in the balance, The Media Future Summit was born. But the irony isn't lost
-- trying to save journalism with an off-the-record event.

Reality TV figures, YouTube stars, recording artists and others with huge followings among Millennials use their social media platforms as paid shills for brands, without disclosing the quid pro quo.
This is not a matter of a few isolated bad actors.

It's time for a gut check. There are those who saw the spot as somehow exploitative and/or trivializing of serious social issues, such as racial justice, religious freedom, women's rights, police
brutality and abuse of super-slow motion. Once again -- in hindsight -- these are fair points. But this was not a failure of strategy.

The overall problem is that metadata for videos remains thin, and relies mainly on the tagging by posters, who don't typically label their work "hate speech" or "kill the Jews." And the technology for
the semantic Web, AI, image screening and other means for detecting repulsive content is simply inadequate. Where porn, racism and gore are concerned, the flagging mechanisms are woefully
intermittent.

"Just folks looking for a change"....at the expense of other folks. Everything he is doing, everything he is, was on full display before Election Day. Those 30 million people should think very hard about what they said "yes" to. Take responsibility. You broke it, you bought it. But the American Way is what's being smashed in front of our eyes, and we're all left to pick up the pieces.

Excellent question. What %age of gross revenue is siphoned off...not only by agency commissions, but by arbitrage and ad-tech middlemen? Considering the near absence of financial controls among the supposedly procurement-obsessed advertisers, my (wild) guess is 30%. But somebody must have a real answer. Anyone?

To Lawrence Rutter:Oh, snap you caught me. Henceforth I will leave my opinion and analysis out of my opinion and analysis column.To Clint Dixon: It is difficult to believe you would write what you've written in a public forum. Well done. It is now on the record forever. Your grandchildren will be so proud.